
Series 10 May, 1917 Number 4 



Meredith College 

Quarterly Bulletin 

1916-1917 
SOME CONSTRUCTIVE ASPECTS OK THE WAR 

CHARLES McLean ANDREWS. Yale University 




Published by Meredith College in November, January, March, and May 

Entered as second-class matter, January 13, 1)08, at the p -st-)tRc3 at Raleigh, N. C. 
under the act of Congress of July 16, 1834 



Monograph 



J15ZS 

• As? 



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SOME CONSTRUCTIVE ASPECTS OF THE WAR* 



Charles McLean Andrews, 
Professor of History, Yale University. 

Those in the world today, whose memory carries them back 
for forty years have passed through a remarkable epoch in the 
lives of men. The period from 1871 to 1914, contributing more 
than the time normally allotted to a generation, saw greater 
changes come over the organization and attitude of the human 
family than any other corresponding series of years in the 
world's history. It had been the longest known era of pearce 
among the leading nations of the west, and during that time 
arose the great industrial and commercial states that are so 
familiar to us, in which the interests of manufacturing and 
trade took the place of interests purely agricultural. Nearly 
every country in the world, during these or preceding years, had 
based its government upon some sort of a written constitution, 
and with the exception of Kussia, Germany, and the Ottoman 
Empire, had eliminated autocratic and class government, and 
based its system of rule upon democracy or what was a close 
approximation thereto. Great Britain and Italy, though re- 
taining the forms of a monarchy, had become in most particu- 
lars as democratic as ourselves and probably in some respects 
even more so. During these years provincial interests gave way 
to world interests, world policy and diplomacy thrust into the 
background the narrower purposes of the older statesmen, and 
fields of activities were disclosed that were unknown to the 
previous generation. Africa was divided among the powers in 
fourteen years, South American States advanced to positions of 
greater stability and solvency, the derelict lands of the Ottoman 
Empire were opened to the fructifying hand of the western 
agriculturist. Siberia became the seat of a new movement in 
colonization, Japan entered the group of the great powers, and 

♦Commencement address delivered at Meredith College, May 22., 
1917. Introductory paragraphs omitted. 



38 Meredith College Bulletin 

China bestirred herself to play in time a conspicuous part in 
the international drama. 

With this growing expansion went tremendous victories of 
man over the obstacles of space and time. Both ceased to be 
serious drawbacks in the conduct of affairs either in business or 
diplor acy. So rapid indeed was the progress of mechanical in- 
ventions that the conditions of a past decade seemed almost as 
antiquated as those of a past century. The effect of such 
progress along every line of human endeavor was almost start- 
ling. The mind became used to magnitudes and sensations. 
Man thought in millions where formerly he had thought in thou- 
sands, he saw almost no limit to human capacity, where formerly 
there had been fixed metes and bounds to human control over 
the forces of nature; he learned of new operations in medicine 
and surgery with the same unconcern as he greeted wireless 
telegraphy, color photography, the flying machine, and the dis- 
covery of the North Pole. He followed the lead of the micro- 
scope to the haunt of the latest bacillus and of the telescope to 
that of the remotest fixed star. He endeavored to understand 
the latest returns from the fields of chemistry, physics, and 
biology, and though he knew little, in truth, of the technique of 
these things, he could comprehend their bearing and importance 
and their relations to the problems of human life and its en- 
vironment. His mind became receptive and credulous rather 
than resistant and unbelieving ; it was astonished at nothing, no 
matter how startling, and felt, often uncoi sciously, that noth- 
ing was fixed, nothing stable, nothing secure against change and 
alteration. 

The effect of such kaleidoscopic variety in the progress of the 
human race and of the manifold opportunities thrown open to 
human ingenuity and inventiveness, was to create a restlessness 
such as had never before prevailed on so gigantic a scale among 
men. It created problems in science, in business, and in social 
relations that demanded exceptional skill on the part of those 
who endeavored to solve them. Customary standards seemed to 
be destroyed by the very rapidity of the changes which under- 
mined older ideals and prevented the establishment of new con- 
ventions. Man was obliged to adjust his relations to the present 



Meredith College Bulletin 39 

and to prepare for the possibilities of the future. Much that 
formerly seemed to be true Avas throwai into the melting pot and 
little was given in return that promised to be permanent either 
in philosophy or practical life. In truth rigid convictions did 
not exist, we were not satisfied with the way we were governed, 
with the older political ideals, or with the older principles of 
conduct. 

To many a thoughtful writer and speaker of the day, condi- 
tions in the western world seemed to be growing worse rather 
than better. The great issues of life and the great ideals of the 
spirit seemed almost lost to sight amid the multitudinous dis- 
tractions and minor interests that disturbed men's souls, gained 
their attention, wasted their lives, and provoked heated contro- 
versy, quarrelling, and resentment. There seemed to be an 
enoromus amount of energy expended on matters that were of 
little consequence in themselves and of no great permanent worth 
in the life of the nation, and the simpler virtues of sobriety, 
temperance, moral integrity, and self-control seemed forgotten 
or atrophied in the search for luxury and pleasure and the 
zest for wealth. There was an unmistakable fear lest the civili- 
zation of the west was declining in spirit, and under the supreme 
test would fail to react to those impulses that make the soul of 
a nation. Though many believed, and with ample reason, that 
the existing social unrest was a salutary symptom of the birth 
of a new moral and industrial order throughout the world, oth- 
ers saw in the continued influence of politics in local and na- 
tional life a menace to efficiency and good government, and in 
the absorption of business and the nervous appetite for excite- 
ment and indulgence a disregard of the spiritual needs of the 
individual and the nation. The question seemed to be how to 
preserve the instincts of moral heroism in the midst of increas- 
ing wealth and luxury and the pull of the political machine, 
-nd how to train a tried and hardy manhood in the face of the 
ease and softness which increasing mastery over the forces of 
nature was rendering everywhere possible. No one questioned 
the advancement of knowledge or of skill in the industrial arts, 
but many wondered whether in character and moral fibre the 
world was holding its own against the vigor of olden days, when 



40 Meredith College Bulletin 

men had convictions and saw the right and sacrificed much that 
the world holds dear, their peace, their property, their hopes of 
success, even their lives for that which they believed to be true. 

It was at this time, therefore, when pessimist and optimist 
were viewing the world from their different points of view, when 
universal peace seemed already a hope approaching fulfillment, 
when the increasing cosmopolitarian in trade and finance 
seemed to render impossible anything approaching a general 
European war, and when a higher conception of the dignity 
of man seemed to make more criminal than ever before the 
slaughter of innocent human beings, that there fell athwart the 
course of peaceful progress the frightful shadow of a great in- 
ternational conflict, a cataclysmic and all but universal tragedy 
of war. The visions of a world made better by the power of 
reason and the play of the finer and more altruistic emotions 
gave place to a terrible convulsion, in which physical force be- 
came the arbiter of human destiny. The material gains of forty 
years seemed suddenly to be swallowed up in a catastrophe of 
overwhelming magnitude ; and the products of human inventive- 
ness and ingenuity were no longer applied to the peaceful task 
of constructive improvement, but were concentrated on the bale- 
ful work of destruction. 

Before the eyes of the world the stage was set for the most 
stupendous drama that had ever been enacted since the world 
began, a drama of terrible import, presented under conditions 
unlike anything before known and performed before the largest 
audience that has ever viewed a world spectacle. We who deal 
with human history and strive with difficulty to visualize the 
events of older days realize that we are face to face with events 
of vaster scope than have ever happened in the past and are 
comprehending them with an intimacy and a fullness undreamed 
of by older generations. The rise of Napoleon and the cam- 
paigns that resulted from his inordinate ambitions, the wide- 
spread revolutionary movement of 1848 and 1849, our own 
great war, and the European conflicts that accompanied the 
mighty efforts for Italian and German unity were relatively 
minor happenings as compared with the titanic struggle which 
began in August 1914, and has involved twenty nations in mortal 



Meredith College Bulletin 41 

combat. We have felt the impact of battle resounding in a 
dozen places at once, until our minds are almost deadened to 
further impressions of horror and disaster, we have known of 
suffering and torture that almost pass the bounds of human be- 
lief, and we have learned of forces at work on land, in the air, 
and under the sea, calling to their aid instruments of death and 
desolation, undreamed of in former wars, that demand even in 
our own satiated age flights of imagination that almost transcend 
credibility. And we have known of all this, not remotely, as of 
distant thunder faintly heard, but as spectators near at hand, 
hearing as it were with our own ears and seeing as it were with 
our own eyes, by means of those inventions which have anni- 
hilated space and time. When we think that our ancestors knew 
of European events weeks and even months after they had hap- 
pened, and that our fathers during our own great war had no 
certainty of knowledge often for many days after the event oc- 
cured, we can realize what it means to read in the morning of 
events taking place the night before and to see with accuracy 
the photographed scenes themselves, not merely as single flashes 
of motionless humanity, but as pictures of living, moving men 
performing their work in every part of the vast terrain, even in 
the very trenches themselves, where official photographers, at 
the peril of their own lives, are obtaining permanent records 
of how modern man conducts himself in the prosecution of 
war. Never have the e^ils and horrors of war been demon- 
strated before such a throng of witnesses as is being done at the 
present time. What such a demonstration means to those now 
living and will mean to those yet unborn, who will view for 
themselves in the futui'e the terrible drama, it is difficult to 
estimate, but the results cannot be to decrease the abhorrence of 
the miseries, the sufferings, and the wastefulness of that last 
resource of nations, the appeal to arms. For despite the oppor- 
tunity that war affords for the display at home and in the field 
of such virtues as courage, self-sacrifice, and devotion to country, 
the fact remains that war is destruction, the destruction of life, 
the destruction of property, the diversion of workers from 
useful labor, the interruption of trade, the shock given to in- 
ternational confidence, and the creation of enmity and hatred 



42 Meredith College Bulletin 

among combatants that renders difficult the resumption of 
friendly relations even after war is over. War is appalling, and 
to a peace-loving nation like our own is the last recourse, to 
be adopted only when all other means have failed and when, as 
President Wilson said, the maintenance of right is more precious 
to us than the maintenance of peace. 

But war, baneful as it is, is not a force making only for de- 
struction. As there may be race deterioration in times of peace, 
so may there be race progress in times of war, and it is to this 
phase of our subject, the constructive aspects of war, that I 
would address myself today. Despite its barbarity and its wick- 
edness, war somehow strengthens the finer instincts of men, and 
its dangers sharpen the faculties, clarify the intelligence, and 
awaken the imagination and the will. In the case of the present 
war, the shock has penetrated deeply the ideas, habits of mind, 
interests, convictions, and daily practices of those who are par- 
ticipants in it, and has had a powerful effect in regenerating 
national character. Sobriety has become a characteristic of 
popular life and thought; old and familiar truths, often neg- 
lected amid the sophistries and speculations of peace, reassert 
themselves and become once more the guides of religion, philoso- 
phy, and conduct ; intellectual and spiritual curiosity receives a 
new quickening, and minor issues all tend to be subordinated to 
the one great issue — the common good and the common need. 
Elaborate theories and finespun arguments seem to lose their 
importance and to give way to the great elemental truths of 
human faith and human intercourse, and simple notions of right 
and wrong and primitive sentiments of the human heart find 
once more a place of worth and mastery. A long period of peace 
tends toward complex views of human life, and an exaggerated 
prominence is often given to the lesser needs of the individual 
and society. The searching flame of war burns away the lesser 
excitements and extravagances and shrivels up the subtleties of 
the higher criticism, the elaborate metaphysics, and the ethical 
distinctions which worry many an individual in times of peace. 
The world is thrown back on the simpler ideas that are born 
of faith, conscience, and common sense, and begins to realize 
that under the supreme test of life and death and the preserva- 



Meredith College Bulletin 43 

tion of homes and liberty, the great fundamental principles of 
our being are those that count and have strength to stand the 
trial of grim reality. 

Except for the difference in scale and in the number of men 
involved, the situation is the same as that which might at any 
time confront individual, household, community, or State. The 
frontier family or garrison surrounded by a skulking horde of 
savages, the group gathered on the deck of a sinking steamer, 
the community threatened with destruction by fire, earthquake, 
or volcanic eruption, represent the same psychological processes 
that are manifest in a people fighting for their integrity or 
their existence. Such a people are face to face with the abnor- 
mal conditions of war, and the traits and characteristics dis- 
played under such conditions of storm and stress are in some 
ways more truly representative of a nation's spirit and mettle, 
than are those which appear under the relaxed conditions of 
peace, security, and bodily ease. As the greatness of the individ- 
ual often exhibits itself only under circumstances of high ten- 
sion, when the emergency calls for quickness of action and no- 
bility of conduct, so the finer qualities of a people are brought 
out under the ordeal of calamity. The world has little use for 
a slacker, a shirker, or a coward. It wishes calamity for no one, 
but it takes great pride in the man who, facing hardship and 
disaster, braces himself to meet the shock, confronts every emer- 
gency with calmness and confidence, finds in the fight he is mak- 
ing a certain exaltation and happiness, pursues his course to the 
end, without complaint and without dismay, and proves himself 
heroic in his struggle, even though his effort be in vain. The 
world does not wish war, but it is often enriched by the virtues 
in man which war discloses. The battlefields of Europe and the 
countries of Europe during war-time form a wonderful labora- 
tory for the study of human psychology. 

But in the countries of the world today, we are seeing more 
than the psychology of war, more than that moral and physical 
heroism which marks the spiritual rebirth of a nation, more 
than the incidents of combat and the organization and strategy 
of campaigns, we are seeing the effects of a mighty human con- 
vulsion upon the course of each nation's history. The war will 



44 Meredith College Bulletin 

stand as a great landmark in the development of every people 
taking part in it, influencing local issues, retarding some, accel- 
lerating others and forcing still more to an immediate and com- 
plete fulfilment. "We are seeing history in the making, with a 
rapidity that is startling in its suddenness and inspiring in the 
richness of its results. We may not — indeed we can not — mea- 
sure with any certainty the full significance of these constructive 
aspects of the war, for that can he done only after the war is 
over and the final reckoning has been made, but we do know that 
institutions and governments, political relations and territorial 
boundaries, traditional opinions and conventional attitudes are 
all undergoing certain modifications, and that constitutional 
practices and social relations are feeling the effects of the new 
conditions. No community, state, or nation can pass through 
the alembic of war, without undergoing profound changes in 
its composition and in the relations of its constitutent parts. 
Issues that have been subjects of controversy for a generation 
and more are decided, as it were, over night, and problems that 
seemed destined to remain unsolved for an indefinite period are 
settled, not as the result of argument or by the vote of majorities, 
but as the result of imperative necessity, that necessity which 
sweeps away parties and factions and demands that all concen- 
trate their efforts on the one great task of conserving every 
ounce of strength which a nation possesses. 

"What are then some of the constructive aspects of the war 
that are likely to remain as permanent parts of our modern civ- 
ilization or to reach riper fulfillment when the return of peace 
shall concentrate once more the attention of the nations of the 
world upon their own upbuilding? 

For us most important of all is the change which the war is 
effecting in our foreign relations and our traditional diplomatic 
attitude. It has been a cardinal principle of our diplomacy for 
a century and a quarter to keep aloof from entangling alliances 
and to avoid embroilment in European affairs. In one sense 
and legally Ave have not broken our rule, for we have entered 
into no formal act of alliance, but in fact and in intention we 
have discarded the old doctrine and have ranged ourselves side 
by side with the Entente allies as a participant in the great war. 



Meredith College Bulletin 45 

It could not be, and it should not be otherwise. For twenty years 
we have been confronted with the inevitable breaking of our 
isolation. With the official declaration in 1890 that our western 
frontier no longer existed and with the acquisition of outlying 
vantage posts in the Atlantic and the Pacific that accompanied 
the national expansion of our material interests, and with the 
completion of the Panama Canal, we have in fact become a 
world nation. As we have grown, the conditions of our physi- 
cal isolation have changed, the three thousand miles of the At- 
lantic have ceased to be an obstacle separating us from the Euro- 
pean continent. At the same time the constant enlargement of 
European activities, as a greater Europe has come into existence 
and local and national policies have been transformed into uni- 
versal and world policies has brought us into direct and imme- 
diate contact with the old world as well as the new. We annexed 
Hawaii and the Philippines, we shared in the work of the Con- 
ferences held at The Hague, we played a very important part in 
the suppression of the Boxer uprising in China and in the peace 
settlement that followed, we offered one of our own cities as the 
meeting place of those who came to settle the terms of peace be- 
tween Russia and Japan, we shared in the debate at yEgeciras 
upon the question of Morocco, and we have now become a part- 
ner in a war, the objects of which are not merely European but 
world-wide, and we shall have our representatives at the con- 
gress of the nations which will be held when the war is over. 
We have not gone out of our way to share in a European conflict, 
but have accepted the burden which a European conflict has 
forced us to bear, because as that conflict widened in scope and 
intensity, it infringed upon our neutral rights, flouted our pre- 
rogatives as an independent and friendly people, and endangered 
our security as a nation. The fact that the United States will 
become one of the signatories of a treaty of peace, the terms of 
which will surpass anything accomplished at Vienna, Paris, or 
Berlin, is a fact of the greatest moment in our history and in 
the history of the world. The entrance of the United States 
into a world concert of the powers, will be one of the great con- 
structive events of the war. 

While the United States is thus advancing to a position of in- 



46 Meredith College Bulletin 

ternational leadership, Great Britain is progressing at an accel- 
lerated pace toward a new national strength and a new federal 
organization. What is commonly called the British Empire is 
in reality, not an empire at all, in the sense of a state with one 
central controlling government, exercising authority over its 
outlying parts. It is a collection of governments, the most im- 
portant of which, outside the British Isles, are free self-govern- 
ing commonwealths, possessing in all essential particulars full 
control over their own destinies. JSTewfoundland, ISTew Zealand, 
the Dominion of Canada, the Commonwealth of Australia, the 
Union of South Africa, each represents a distinct type of na- 
tion, living its own life and solving its own problems in its own 
way. Before the war, one might have believed that the more 
these colonies became distinct in interests and policy, the more 
they would be inclined to break their connections with the 
mother country, and there is no doubt but that Germany believed 
some or all of these colonies would either separate from Great 
Britain or would declare themselves neutral in the war that was 
to come. Never were expectations less true to fact. When put 
to the test of loyalty, every colony and dependency of Great 
Britain, without a single exception, showed itself British in 
heart and purpose. From every colony came men or money. 
Canadian, l^ewfoundlander, Australian, and New Zealander, as 
well as native troops from India have been in the very forefront 
of the battles on European soil, fighting not for England but 
with her, because as it happens England's ideas and theirs were 
the same. Even in South Africa, where only a decade and a 
half ago England warred with the Boers to preserve the higher 
unity of the whole against disruption by a part, the very men 
who opposed her so bitterly, are now with the exception of a 
few irreconcileables, proving their loyalty to their conqueror by 
fighting bravely and successfully against the common enemy. 
Never has there been in the history of the world an exhibit like 
this, a unity of action based not on race bL.t on liberty, on com- 
mon aspirations and purposes, in which British peoples are 
pledging "their all to each other with stern resolve to stand or 
fall together." War has tightened the bonds of a far-flung em- 
pire, scattered in every part of the habitable globe and including 



Meredith College Bulletin 47 

a fourth of the population and a fourth of the area of the earth. 
"Never again can there be any question as to where the colonies 
stand in their relation to the empire nor any doubt as to the 
existence of an imperial unity, which is in all essential respects 
national. Never before has it been shown, nor is it likely that 
it can ever be shown again in so dramatic a way, that in the 
modern world geographical distance has disappeared and that a 
nation may exist planted on all continents and divided by all 
seas."^ 

The war has shown, therefore, that the British peoples are 
"profoundly united in a union much stronger and deeper than 
any mechanism can produce," and the results of this discovery 
cannot long remain uncertain. Out of the manifold parts of the 
British empire will be created a new type of political organiza- 
tion. The movement which has been under way for many years 
looking to the creation of an Imperial Federation will now be- 
come a reality. It is already well understood that in some way 
and under some form, not yet determined on, though frequently 
discussed, the colonies and even India must have some share in 
the government of the empire, and that matters which concern 
the interests of the whole must be under the control of a central 
government in which the whole is represented. Contrary-wise 
it is equally clear that if the self-governing dominions share the 
privileges of the empire, they must also share its burdens, that 
the new arrangement may be in all ways reciprocal. We need 
not consider here the various plans on foot for the welding of 
these states, separated from each other by the whole world's dia- 
meter, into a federal system, in which England, Scotland and 
Wales are to be but one of many self-governing parts. The fact 
that there is even now sitting in London an Imperial War 
Council, on which are representatives of the Dominions and 
India and the further fact that any reorganization must be based 
upon full recognition of the dominions as autonomous nations 
of an Imperial commonwealth and India as an important part 
thereof, are among the great constructive events of the war. 
How long such an experiment would have been deferred had the 

iG. B. Adams, "British Imperial Federation," in The Yale Review. 



48 Meredith College Bulletin 

war not taken place, it is impossible to say, but today the higher 
federation of the empire is a living issue, and when consum- 
mated will represent a new application of the federal principle, 
arousing in many optimistic minds the hope of a federation of 
the world. 

Far more startling in its apparent suddenness and highly dra- 
matic as all revolutionary events are dramatic, was the uprising 
in Russia, whereby the autocratic regime was broken and the 
rule of the Romanoffs brought to an end. Accustomed though 
the historian is to rapid changes in the past and readily as his 
mind adapts itself to alterations in the map and governments of 
Europe, it is difficult even for him to adjust himself to the new 
conditions which now prevail in Russia, and to realize that the 
most characteristic features of Muscovite life are gone, never to 
return. Though revolution had been preparing for a dozen 
years, and though the October constitution of 1905 and the aboli- 
tion of the secret police marked a modification of the old system 
of harsh and despotic rule, yet the transformation of Russia into 
a modern, liberal, democratic state seems more like a dream than 
a reality. The land of the knout and the prison, of inhuman 
punishments for political offenses, of nihilists, anarchists, bombs, 
and political murders, the land from which offenders have gone 
in exile to England and Switzerland, or in chains to the prison 
camps of Siberia, has now to all appearances become politically 
free and prospectively democratic. One cannot easily think of 
Siberia as no longer the synonym for a living death, or picture 
the returning exiles breaking their prison bonds and speeding 
westward to freedom in the new Russia by order of those in 
authority in Petrograd. Henceforth, we are to look on Siberia, 
not as a place of mines and convict settlements, but as a new 
world of free colonists, transforming by willing labor this great 
and neglected land into one of the most productive on the earth. 

But the transformation is not of Russia only, it is also that 
of Finland, Poland, and the Jewish peoples. The Jews are free 
at last in a country where anti-Semitism has resulted not only 
in social and civic ostracism, but also in Jew-baiting, widespread 
massacre, and the passage of abominable laws which have driven 
thousands across the western frontier to seek an asylum in other 



Meredith College Bulletin 49 

lands. The emancipation of the Jews in Russia stands with the 
emancipation of the exiles in Siberia as a marvelous accomplish- 
ment in the sphere of human liberty and human justice. For 
Poland the future is uncertain, but the promise is high. The 
Russian provisional government has offered to re-establish 
Poland as an independent state, and in behalf of the Russian 
nation has promised freedom to all parts of the ancient Polish 
Republic. This promise responds to the demands, and fulfills 
the hopes of a people who are now divided between Russia, Aus- 
tria, and Germany, but who have never lost their traditions or 
their sense of integrity, and though existing only as a race ele- 
ment in central Europe, subjected though not subdued, are 
keenly alive to the promise of a better future. That a new 
Poland will arise on the ruins of the old seems probable, should 
the war end in a victory for the Entente allies, and a free Poland 
is certain to prove loyal to whomsoever is its liberator. Whether 
after a century of subjection, the Polish people, never successful 
as political administrators, can rise to the high level of a self- 
governing state is one of the problems that time alone can solve. 
As to the future of Finland, the solution is more certain. 
There during the last quarter of a century Russian autocracy 
has found its most unwilling victim, for there the constitution of 
Alexander I, solemnly confirmed by his successors, has been 
abrogated and Finnish autonomy largely destroyed. Of all the 
Panslavic movements, the Russification of Finland has been the 
most dishonorable and the most unnecessary, but the Finnish 
people, undismayed, have waited the appointed time, confident 
that Russian despotism could not last forever. And now the 
revolution Tias solved the Finnish problem, and the Russian pro- 
visional government has restored to the Finns their constitution, 
has given back in full the liberties that were confirmed to them 
when they entered the empire, and has wiped out all the restric- 
tive edicts made by Alexander III and Nicholas II. In the 
name of the Russian people, the Russian minister of justice de- 
clared that Russia would do everything in its power to perpetu- 
ate Finnish freedom and that between the two peoples there 
would be henceforth a complete agreement based on reciprocal 
confidence and mutual regard. I have longed for a word from 



50 Meredith College Bulletin 

my many Finnish friends with whom I talked over these ques- 
tions five years ago in Helsingfors and Tammerfors, that I 
might rejoice with them over the end of Russian tyranny. What 
the ultimate solution will be, whether autonomy under the aegis 
of Russia or separation as an independent people, no one can 
foretell ; the issues of a great revolution are beyond the scope of 
prophecy, but self-government for Finland is assured. Though 
for Russia, the end is not yet, and though the outlook is dark as 
is always the outlook of revolutions, we can still hope that under 
the pressure of an outside danger, moderate and radical will 
pull together in behalf of the newly won liberties. 

The ramifications of the Eastern and the far Eastern questions, 
as the result of the war, are manifold. What is to be the future 
of the Ottoman Empire, and what is the significance of recent 
movements in China and the far East? Should the Entente 
allies win, the future of Turkey is certain to be decided and an 
undesirable and hopelessly unassimilable element in European 
life will be removed forever as far as the European continent 
is concerned. Those who are familiar with the gradual decrease 
of Ottoman territory during the last two centuries, who have 
seen the revolt of Arabia since the war began, and who are 
watching today the conquest of the Mesopotamian Valley believe 
that eventually the Turk will be driven from Europe and the 
middle East, and will be confined to an area of Asia Minor, until 
he disappears as an independent power from the face of the 
earth. Would that it might be so ! With the Turk out of 
Europe, the near Eastern question will have ceased to exist. As 
that perplexing enigma has been for years a part of the stock in 
trade of the diplomat and the historian, its disappearance will 
change vitally the aspect of the near East, and alter materially 
one of the most significant phases of historical discussion. With 
the Mesopotamian Valley rescued from Turkish hands, an area 
of great fertility will blossom under proper control, just as 
Egypt has done under British management, and with Palestine 
and Syria under the aegis of Great Britain and France, it is not 
impossible that Zionism will take on a new lease of life; a 
Jewish Palestine may become a reality; and a Jewish state in 
the old Jewish homeland may become the spiritual and cultural 



Meredith College Bulletin 51 

centre of the Jews throughout the world. It is true that mauy 
Jews do not believe it either necessary or possible to establish 
a separate Jewish national state, but there are those who desire 
a homeland and a nationality of their own, and are hoping that 
their dream will some day be fulfilled. To those the possible 
defeat of Turkey contains a great and a noble promise. 

For the far East, the war has already brought into high 
relief a new and unexpected development. When less than two 
months ago China broke off relations with Germany, an event 
took place of far reaching importance that begins a new chapter 
in the history of that oldest of the nations of the world. No 
longer afraid that Russia will enter into combination for her 
dismemberment, and daring to act in a paramount matter of 
foreign policy without consultation with Japan, China has taken 
a step which is likely to bring her into the ranks of the great 
powers, and in case of allied victory to obtain for herself a place 
at the peace congress that will be held when the war is over. 
There, as a republic, which has been influenced by the same 
motives that have actuated ourselves, she will be entitled to have 
her grievances considered as an independent and autonomous 
state. This means that she will demand freedom from Japanese 
control and will depend on British and American public opinion 
to strengthen her in her determination to resist the autocratic 
policy which Japan has been pursuing toward her during the 
last few years. The question is too large for consideration here, 
but with China an ally and not a dependent state, subject to 
spoilation and partition, the issue may mean the final abolition 
of the last marks of her subordination and humiliation. Should 
China cooperate effectively with the allies during the war, she 
may win a recognition that will give her independence and sta- 
bility to an extent hitherto unknown. Thus the bold initiative 
which has brought China into line with the other powers may 
have results as important for the world as the revolution in 
Russia and may prove in the end one of the great constructive 
events of the war. 

These are a few of the great changes in the organization and 
status of some of the states of the world that have already been 
effected or may be effected as the result of the universal war. 



52 Meredith College Bulletin 

To the careful observer there are scores of others, some conspicu- 
ous and attracting attention, others more subtle and operating 
more obscurely that have felt or will feel the pressure and thrust 
of a new force. There is the granting of parliamentary suffrage 
to the women of England as the result of their war services and 
sacrifices, and the probable recasting of the whole industrial 
fabric as the result of woman's noteworthy demonstration of 
her efficiency and skill. There are the enormous advances that 
have been made in the mechanical arts and the application of 
science to the demands of the war. There is the effect which the 
experiences and sensations of war will have upon literature and 
the drama, and the beneficial influence which sober reality must 
exert upon the bizarre aspects of painting and poetry. And 
there is the enormous progress which has already been made in 
the knowledge of disease and its remedies, and in the skill of 
the physician and the surgeon. Of these subjects I can say noth- 
ing here. They will all receive their meed of consideration when 
the war is over and the reckoning of its results has been begun. 
As the great conflict has passed step by step from a European 
into a world war and as one nation after another has become a 
participant in it, one feature has manifested itself with increas- 
ing distinctness, until it has become in the minds of many the 
leading issue and the main end for which the war is being 
fought. This issue is democracy versus autocracy, and it has 
been given unmistakable prominence, owing to the fact that with 
the fall of the Komanoffs in Russia and the entrance of China 
as an allied sympathizer, all of the powers ranged against Ger- 
many are either in name or in fact democratic nations. There 
is no doubt but that democracy has gained from the war to such 
an extent as to become one of the great issues involved, but to 
speak as if the main object of the war were nothing more than 
to substitute democracy for autocracy or to overthrow the forms 
of government established in Germany and Austria-Hungary is 
to make a fundamental and far-reaching mistake. No one can 
deny the right of any country to set up whatever form of gov- 
ernment it wishes, provided that government does not imperil 
the security of its neighbors or endanger the peace of the world. 
No outside power has any right or reason to intrude upon the 



Meredith College Bulletin 53 

domestic concerns of any nation in the world today, and if the 
German people are content with the system they have, it is not 
for us or for anyone to say that they are wrong. One might 
as justly deny to Japan her right to have an hereditary and in- 
vulnerable Imperial throne, a war-lord as a prime minister, and 
a body of influential Japanese junkers with jingoistic and im- 
perial pretensions, as to object to the particular form of govern- 
ment, which today is approved by those diverse peoples who, 
united under the Prussian monarchy, constitute the German 
Empire. Nor is the issue the overthrow of Hapsburg or Hohcn- 
zollern, who, as long as their retention on their thrones does not 
menace the peace of other nations and meets with the support 
of the people whom they govern, have as much right to exist as 
have the kings of England and Italy and the Emperor of Japan. 
It must be said that what is sometimes called the "king's business" 
is not much in favor at the present time, and that there is abroad 
a conviction that things dynastic, unless shorn of their specially 
dynastic characteristics, are somewhat out of date. There is 
also a growing feeling that military and reactionary forces in 
government are losing their grip as desirable features of modern 
political life and a belief that the strengthening of the popular 
and liberal elements and the extension of the democratic idea 
will make for a more certain peace and justice in the world. To 
this extent the war may be said to be a war for the preservation 
and extension of democracy. 

It is further said in elaboration of this idea, and the inclusion 
of the statement in the president's address to Congress has given 
it further currency that there exists a difference between the 
German government and the German people, and that we are 
fighting in one sense the cause of that people against their rulers. 
I cannot see any truth in this contention. In its foreign relations 
and military policy the German government is autocratic be- 
cause the Emperor is exclusively and entirely responsible for all 
that concerns these affairs, but in its social and domestic con- 
cerns it is not autocratic, because the people have universal 
suffrage and representation in the Reichstag, and consequently 
share in the responsiblity for all that is done in that law-making 
body. All appropriations for military and naval purposes must 



54 Meredith College Bulletin 

have the sanction of the representatives of the people, who thus 
support the autocracy of the monarchy in its world policy. 
Hence Germany is an example of autocracy nationalized. We 
must not forget that the German people have heen organized 
and regimented, drilled and disciplined, into a marvellous, 
smooth-running machine, methodical as the system of an ant-hill 
or a hee-hive, and are as little likely to break from their obedi- 
ence or to start a revolution, as would the parts of a machine re- 
fuse to respond to the power of the engines that drive it. Polit- 
ically, they are a docile people, neither revolutionary nor war- 
like, and they stand today a unit behind their emperor, because 
they have absolute belief in the state, in a military organization 
as the most perfect type of a political system, and in the right 
of those in authority to commandeer every man, woman, and 
child for whatever purpose they may desire to accomplish. 
There is no line of separation between the German government 
and the German people, the two together constitute a single, 
compact, working whole. 

The struggle is not between two forms of government or for 
the purpose of overthrowing kings or emperors, by whatever 
dynastic name they may be known. It is rather a contest be- 
tween two sets of national ideals, two national creeds, two views 
as to the law which should govern the states of the world in their 
relations to each other. It is not the form of government but 
the moral sentiments of nations that are at stake. The German 
training has been in the direction of patriotic obedience to au- 
thority and of absolute faith in the superiority of the German 
system. The mass of the people follow their leaders blindly, 
believing that the state is greater than the individual and that 
by painstaking organization their society may be raised to the 
pinnacle of human greatness. Their leaders constitute powerful 
castes, hereditary, military, and official, the last two of which, 
constantly recruited from all classes of the population, are com- 
posed of highly trained and intelligent experts, to whom the 
mass of the people bow in all humility. These experts, trained 
in German universities and passed through the requirements of 
a universal military training have made performance and effi- 
ciency their ideals, and in order to attain results have become 



Meredith College Bulletin 55 

willingly a part of the great governmental machine, the object of 
which is to organize the nation for the accomplishment of its 
ends. This expert military and administrative caste has devel- 
oped a sense of superiority, not only towards its inferiors at 
home, but also toward the people of the world outside. It tends 
to become arrogant, supercilious and dictatorial, unduly set in 
its opinions, obstinate and unimaginative, looking with ill-dis- 
guised contempt upon everything that might be stigmatized as 
merely popular. Professor Kuno Francke, himself a loyal pro- 
German, says that "even among teachers in the gymnasia and 
university professors this type of the supercilious and unap- 
proachable expert is not absent; "it is often found," he says, 
"among administrative officials, most frequently, among army 
officials. To say that the latter forms a social, if not a political 
caste, is no exaggeration, a caste of splendidly trained, highly 
intelligent, thoroughly devoted specialists, and for the most part 
fine and manly fellows, but somehow or other lacking in those 
wider human sympathies and generous instincts which we asso- 
ciate with a democracy." Mr. Frederick Walcott, who in 1916, 
traveled widely among them on a relief commission and was 
given every opportunity for observation, said of the German 
leadei-s that they lacked only heart to make them great, and that 
the men of the military caste possessed no drop of the milk of 
human kindness. Those men are in the first instance servants 
of the State and only in a far more remote sense than with us 
servants of the people, and they deem pride, and conceit, and 
arrogant defence of their creed essential to true patriotism. 

Furthermore among the methods adopted for the attainment 
of its ends, the German military caste advocates the law of 
might, the law of the mailed fist and the shining armor, and up- 
holds the non-moral doctrine that it is unnecessary, when Ger- 
man destiny calls and the German state decrees, to regard the 
law of nations or of civilization, or to keep faith with neighbor- 
ing peoples, in respect of any treaty or contract, the existence of 
which is an obstacle to German success. On the one hand they 
reject that law of life which is by all of us deemed essential to 
the continued welfare of humanity, the law of right, justice, and 
mercy, without which civilization would revert to the barbarism 



56 Meredith College Bulletin 

of the past ; and on the other, they reject the law of mutual con- 
fidence and good faith, which is just as necessary in the world 
of international relations as it is in the world of international 
finance, and without which all trust, honor, and security would 
vanish and the intercourse of nations be reduced to the level of 
the jungle and the savage tribe. 

Although in outward form the struggle appears to be between 
democracy and autocracy, or as it may be more accurately ex- 
pressed, between democracy and a national state autocratically 
organized, the contest is in reality between two sets of ideals. 
One of these is based on individual character, is governed by 
public opinion, and is dominated by motives of right, sympathy, 
and justice. It is frequently accompanied by unintelligence and 
corruption in government, by a great lack of discipline and effi- 
ciency in execution, and as far as foresight is concerned by great 
indefiniteness of aim or purpose; but it gives high place to in- 
dividual independence, upholds peace among the nations, and 
encourages the cultivation of certain virtues of a manly and 
moral nature. The other ideal involves the subordination of the 
individual and the supremacy of the state, the worship of disci- 
pline and the machinery of organization, and the creation of 
men highly trained, intelligent, enormously energetic, even if 
not always as efficient as is commonly supposed, who are ex- 
pected to employ their efforts to the attainment of certain defin- 
ite and immediate ends. The application of this ideal is accom- 
panied with a lamentable want of insight into the workings of 
human nature and a disregard of the rights of others, which has 
shown itself in extraordinary blunders of diplomacy, an offen- 
sive system of espionage, gross miscalculation of the psychology 
of nations, and a curious faith in theories, academically worked 
out, as to what another nation will do under given circumstances. 
This German method of conducting diplomacy according to 
academic formulae has led to a vast amount of self-deception 
among the German diplomats, and causes us to wonder how long 
this deception can continue among a great intelligent people like 
the Germans, drilled and disciplined as they are and long prac- 
ticed in submission to governmental direction and in acceptance 
of governmental explanations. Mr. Brand Whitlock, our min- 



Meredith College Bulletin 57 

ister to Belgium, has lately said, "The German capacity for 
blundering is almost as great as the German capacity for 
cruelty." 

Given these contrasting ideals as representative of the peoples 
pitted against each other, may we not hope that out of the con- 
flict will arise a higher ideal than either, in which the best of 
each will be conjoined. May not one of the constructive results 
of the war, at least for the western nations and possibly for Ger- 
many also, be the creation of a single ideal, in which expert 
training, organized devotion, discipline, obedience, and well- 
directed performance may be linked with character and indi- 
vidual liberty, justice, humanity and the moral law. The Ger- 
mans have taught the world the science of organization and the 
lesson has already been learned by their enemies, particularly 
the British, who in the space of a few months have equalled the 
Germans in their own field. The lesson must be learnt by 
us also. That we need in this country some of the virtues of the 
German ideal cannot be questioned, and that democratic govern- 
ment in order to be efficient government and at the same time 
good government, must get rid of what is left of the old-time 
excessive individualism, born in the days of the pioneer and the 
frontier, is becoming evident to all. The age of individualism 
has definitely passed, the doctrine of states' rights as a political 
shibboleth is passing away. For the first time in the history of 
our federal organization the people of our states and sections 
are beginning to think, not in terms of their own local 
interests but in terms of the interest of the country as 
a whole. Only when we are thinking nationally shall we 
become a nation, for nationality is not a question of race but of 
common needs, common purposes, and common ideals. I believe 
that for us the war will hasten, as it is already hastening, the 
tendency toward increased national unity and authority and will 
bring home to every individual the necessity of subordinating 
much of his boasted liberty and independence to the higher needs 
of the community as a whole. There is no danger that we shall 
overdo discipline or worship organization for its own sake, or 
be transformed from a peace-loving to a militaristic people, but 
we can learn and are learning from the pressure of war-needs 



58 Meredith College Bulletin 

upon us how to train young men without making them profes- 
sional soldiers and how to increase centralized authority without 
lessening those individual and moral guarantees, without which 
concentration of power may become a weapon of oppression 
rather than an instrument for the common good. 

We now reach the last phase of our subject, and ask ourselves 
what is likely to be the effect of the war upon that which is com- 
monly called international, but which may perhaps better be 
called super-national organization and relationship. It is 
abundantly evident that the world will not return to the lame 
and impotent internationalism of the period before the war, but 
will make a tremendous effort to set up some system which will 
render impossible, as nearly as may be, the recurrence of the 
calamities of the last three years. The conscience of the world 
has revolted against the useless waste and cruelty of this greatest 
of human disasters, and will demand that some means be con- 
trived to prevent its repetition and to give body to the doctrine 
that all are of one family, in which the good and evil of one is 
the good and evil of all. The progress of civilization must be the 
progress of international comity, sympathy, cooperation, and 
fair dealing, and must recognize the validity of ethical laws to 
which we hold individuals and communities alike amenable. 
The greatest question before the world today, as far as the future 
is concerned, is whether the nations acting in harmony can be 
purged of their traditions and can enter upon anything that de- 
serves the name of true international reform. 

Even now plans in great variety, often inconsistent and con- 
tradictory, illogical and impracticable, have been advanced 
chiefly by writers among the western nations, for the improve- 
ment of international relations, and the prevention, if possible, 
of a recurrence of war. Among the many specifics and cure-alls 
suggested, a few may be taken as showing in a way the construc- 
tive work likely to be taken up after the war is over. 

In the first place, international relations must be based on 
mutual confidence and not on the mutual distrust that has 
hitherto characterized these relations. This means that there 
must be a reform of the system of modern diplomacy. Diplo- 
mats must be more representative of popular needs and 



Meredith College Bulletin 59 

sentiments and express as far as it is possible to express, 
the desires and intentions of a people. Diplomatic office 
must cease to be the spoil of party; diplomatic inter- 
course must be rid of secrecy, obscurantism, and espionage. 
These features have been a part of the German war 
creed and espionage has been raised to the rank of an organized 
science in Germany's dealings with her neighbors. We in the 
United States feel that the system of employing men and women 
in all walks of life to spy upon a friendly country in times of 
peace and upon a neutral country in times of war is contempt- 
ible business. There is something in the way the German mili- 
tary and civil leaders prepare for and conduct a war that is lack- 
ing in chivalry and highmindedness. The French have always 
charged that Bismarck did not play fairly the game of diplo- 
macy and war, and that while appealing to the Most High God, 
a just God as long as he favored Prussia's ambitions, did not 
hesitate to employ means both brutal and dishonorable to gain 
his ends. To them and to us there is something repulsive in 
the contrast. The events of the present war have only served 
to deepen this impression. The German has not been a generous 
or a magnanimous enemy ; he has not been a good sport, because 
he has taken defeat sulkily or with anger, refusing to acknowl- 
edge failure, even though such failure is apparent to everybody 
else. The business of war and of diplomacy must be conducted 
with some regard for the rules of the game. It may be that some 
<iay we shall reach that level mentioned in President Wilson's 
address, where the same standards of conduct and of resjion- 
sibility for wrong done shall be observed among the nations and 
their governments that are observed among the individual citi- 
zens of civilized states. 

Equally important with the standards of diplomatic inter- 
course is the reform of the treaty-making methods which have 
been in vogue in the past. Ought not all treaty negotiations to 
be open to the knowledge of the world and ought not all secret 
agreements and understandings to be eliminated altogether. 
Ought not the text of treaties to be published in full, with the 
certainty there are no hidden clauses to make future trouble. 
-Shall there not be introduced drastic alterations and improve- 



60 Meredith College Bulletin 

ments in the conditions governing the carrying out of treaties, 
by making proper provisions for their renewal, alteration, and 
abrogation at frequent intervals, for it seems absurd that the 
relations between countries should be governed by treaties made 
fifty, seventy-five, or a hundred years ago. Have we any right 
to make a treaty today that will bind our children a quarter of 
a century or half a century hence? And there must be some 
way in which the validity of treaties can be guaranteed and 
their sanctity assured, through some method of obtaining the 
world's approval or the approval of a majority of the states mak- 
ing up the concert of the nations. 

Equally important with the standards of diplomatic conduct 
and the sanction of treaties is the fashioning of a law of nations, 
a law which today lacks body and authority and is incapable of 
enforcement. The present war has shown, in a manner ex- 
tremely discouraging, the futility of much that passed for inter- 
national law before the war began. This law was based in con- 
siderable part on the consensus of nations expressed at the con- 
gresses from Westphalia to Berlin and at the Hague Confer- 
ences of 1899 and 1907. How can international law become real 
and valid ? Shall there be a real international or super-national 
law-making body, which, acting for the world as the legislature 
acts for individual states, shall pass laws governing the inter- 
course of states ? Such a body, the official organ of a society of 
nations, working through committees or commissions, might in- 
vestigate problems and conditions, studying such matters as 
tariffs, free trade, the open door, the administration of colonies, 
and the safeguarding of trade on land and sea. The idea of such 
a body seems almost Utopian, but it is not inconceivable or with- 
out precedent. Our own federal system with its interstate com- 
merce commission points the way, and the possible erection of a 
permanent federal cabinet for the British Imperial Common- 
wealth, similar to the Imperial War Ministry now sitting, would 
be a step toward a higher form of federation than ever existed 
before. Such would constitute a super-national headship, recog- 
nized by the nations of the world and possessing authority over 
them in all that concerned their external relations. 

Such a system presupposes two things: An international 



Meredith College Bulletin 61 

judiciary and an international executive, both independent and 
effective, beyond the reach of national control or the influence 
of popular fear or favor, concerning themselves with external 
questions only and having nothing to do with internal matters 
of administration or otherwise. Many suggestions to these ends 
have already been made and the difficulties certain to be met 
have in a measure already been discounted. An international 
judiciary has been tried and with some success, but an inter- 
national executive has never been experimented with in any 
form. Is such an executive practicable in itself, and if practi- 
cable what shall be its character and the extent of its powers? 
Shall it be temporary, shall it be permanent, shall it have ad- 
ministrative functions, managing backward countries in trustee- 
ship for the world, or shall it be only executive, existing for no 
other purpose than to preserve the peace among the nations? 

AVhatever the details, there is a widespread agreement that 
some concert of the nations must come into existence, some con- 
cert or confederation, standing above the nations with legisla- 
tive, judicial, and executive powers strongly developed. Such 
confederation or super-national system must be built on confi- 
dence and faith, and must find its strength in the co-operative 
agreement of nations and peoples for the common good. The 
conflict between nationalism and internationalism is not without 
possibility of adjustment, but ample time must be allowed for 
the process to take shape. The many forms of federalism today 
rest upon a common recognition of a common need, and the 
recent gathering of British, French, and American commission- 
ers at Washington is really a gigantic experiment in inter- 
nationalism, the creation of a super-national system for the con- 
trol of the necessities of the world. It has been spoken of as the 
beginning of a league of nations, born of common needs and 
dangers, and expressing an extraordinary community of ideals. 
This impulse to international unity, due to common perils and 
common necessities, and having as its object the control of the 
vital supplies on which human existence depends, may be the in- 
auguration of a movement which will find its consummation in 
an international political organization among the leading na- 
tions of the earth. Let there arise as the result of conditions 



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62 Meredith College Bulletin 




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due to the present war a common desire and a common deter- 
mination, let there he developed a common will to act together, 
and let there grow a consciousness of international social and 
economic unity and the end may he attained. 

But we too must do our part not merely as a government hut 
as a people. I have spoken of the spiritual rehirth of the great 
nations of Europe and I can hut add that as we enter upon this 
war with firmness and resolve to play the man's part, we too 
shall find our own reward, not only in the consciousness of right 
but in the victory over ourselves. The days of drift, of faith in 
manifest destiny, of lucky chance, of softness and ease, of ruth- 
less individualism, of privilege and pull are certainly numbered. 
The crisis will show whether the young men and the young 
women of this country can whip themselves into diciplined and 
organized endeavor, and can stiffen their wills to meet the new 
and difficult task that this country is called upon to perform. 
Democracy is more than freedom, opportunity, wealth, and hap- 
piness, and the measure of its success lies not in the ease and 
comfort that it brings, the money it accumulates, or the charity 
it excites. The problem of democrary is how to train ourselves, 
our children, and the aliens who are in our midst to subject the 
liberty which this great country confers upon all to the shaping 
and guiding power of the inner law, that self-imposed law, 
which is the highest achievement of the human will. Herein 
lies the discipline of democracy, a discipline not mechanically 
imposed by an autocratic power lying outside ourselves, but 
springing from within and born of the ideals of service, duty, 
and responsibility, on gratitude for what we have received and 
a desire to add something to the advantages which civilization 
has brought, a discipline that will find in the confused and con- 
tradictory phenomena of our lives an ordered intelligent plan, in 
which a sense of law, a sense of moral obligation, and a regu- 
lated and restrained freedom will be the guiding and controll- 
ing features. If this be the result of the trial that lies before 
us, then the war will have conferred its greatest constructive 
benefit upon the most powerful democratic nation in the world. 



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